Brenda Chalfin. Butter Republic: State Power, Global Markets, and the Making of an Indigenous Commodity. New York: Routledge, 2004. xx + 295 pp. Photographs. Tables. Maps. Bibliography. Index. $ 33.95. Paper. This book is the study of an encounter between the market and a highly robust regional commodity, one that may be something of a mystery to the general reader but well-known to the people of the West African savanna or to expatriates who have conducted research there. Shea butter (known in Francophone countries as karite) is the tropical oil that local women produce every year in tens of thousands of tons, following more or less traditional techniques, from the fruit of the ecological wonder, the spontaneously growing shea tree (Butyrospermum parkii, alternatively paradoxum). In what Chalfin calls a forceful intersection of distinct economic formations (6), women play a preponderant role, certainly on the African side, but increasingly also on the global side, as international demand for shea shifts to beauty products with exotic ingredients, in addition to moderately priced chocolate. In the first chapter Chalfin describes the production and sale of shea oil in northern Ghana, its fit with the farming economy, and the older patterns of commoditization. The role of women comes out clearly in this discussion-as gatherers of the fruit, processors of the nut, extractors of the oil, and finally sellers of the product and also intermediate merchants bulking it, distributing it regionally, and supplying the cities. The second chapter focuses on the impact of colonial policies after 1901, which aimed to foster exports and produced mountains of technical research but ultimately foundered on the economic crises of the 1930s. Part of the problem was that shea is a high-value product; it cannot be supplied cheaply because of a resilient regional demand with which the export market has to contend. Chalfin demonstrates that unsteady state intervention reflected shifting agendas and an uneasy relationship between colonial government and private capital. Fast forward to the 1980s reform period in chapter 3. J. J. Rawlings's government was torn between its populist promises to expand the shea trade and pressures of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to withdraw from the economy in order to qualify for vitally needed loans. The shea industry became the sacrificial victim the Ghanaian state led to the altar of structural adjustment in order to save some control over the much more important cocoa marketing. Chapter 4 situates shea oil in international trade and includes a discussion of the European Union wars. African cocoa-producing countries united to influence these European debates and prevent the relaxation of chocolate purity standards, which would have resulted in greater use of additions such as shea oil. …